cooking dilutes and dulls their color.
Green onions, or scallions, can be either
bulb-forming onion varieties harvested quite
young, or special varieties that never do form
bulbs. Shallots are a distinctive, clustering
variety of onion whose bulbs are smaller,
finer-textured, and somewhat milder and
sweeter, often with a purple coloration.
They’re especially valued in France and
southeast Asia.
Garlic Garlic is the central Asian native
Allium sativum, which produces a tight head
of a dozen or more bulbs, or “cloves.”
“Elephant garlic” is actually a bulbing variety
of leek, with a milder flavor, and “wild garlic”
yet another species, A. ursinum. Unlike
multilayered onion bulbs, garlic cloves
consist of a single swollen storage leaf
surrounding the young shoot. That leaf
contains much less water than onion scales do
— under 60% of its weight, compared to 90%